<p>416. THE REFRIGERATOR AWAKES
<a l:href="#c_445"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Crash!And if darkness could sound, it would sound like this giantwaking up in the torture house, trying to dieand not dying, and tryingnot to cry and immediately cryingthat he will, that he will, that he will do his bestto adjust his dark soul to the pressing requestof the only true frost,and he pants and he gasps and he rasps and he wheezes:ice is the solid form when the water freezes;a volatile liquid (see «Refrigerating»)is permitted to pass into evaporatingcoils, where it boils,which somehow seems wrong,and I wonder how longit will rumble and shudder and crackle and pound;Scudder, the Alpinist, slipped and was foundhalf a century later preserved in blue icewith his bride and two guides and a dead edelweiss;a German has proved that the snowflakes we seeare the germ cells of stars and the sea life to be;holdthe line, hold the line, lest its tale be untold;let it amble along through the thumping painand horror of dichlordisomethingmethane,a trembling white heart with the frost froth upon it,Nova Zembla, poor thing, with that В in her bonnet,stunned bees in the bonnets of cars on hot roads,Keep it Kold, says a poster in passing, and lo,loads,of bright fruit, and a ham, and some chocolate cream,and three bottles of milk, all contained in the gleamof that wide-open whitegod, the pride and delightof starry-eyed couples in dream kitchenettes,and it groans and it drones and it toils and it sweats—Shackleton, pemmican, penguin, Poe's Рут—collapsing at last in the criminalnight.<28 ноября 1941>
